Two- and three-photon spectroscopy of solids under high pressure

The present article reviews measurements under hydrostatic pressure on the tetrahedrally-bonded semiconductors CuCI, CuBr, ZnO, ZnS, ZnSe, ZnTe, Cds, and AgGaS2, by two-photon spectroscopy and on the alkali halides NaC1, KBr, KI, and RbI by two- and three-photon spectroscopy. It is shown that these nonlinear techniques yield a much higher precision than linear spectroscopy in the determination of the pressure dependence of the electronic band gap. Additionally, it is often possible to determine the pressure dependence of other parameters of the electronic band structure like exciton binding energy, spin-orbit coupling, crystal-field interaction, and Luttinger parameters. In the case of the alkali halides with their rather large band gaps there is a further advantage of three-photon spectroscopy, namely that pressure-cell windows need only be transparent for photons of one third of the band gap energy.